The Celestial Tradition: A Study of Ezra Pound's The Cantos

Eric Domville is a professor of English at the University of Toronto.

This study presents yet another interpretation of Ezra Pound’s The
Cantos. Its focus is on Pound and the occult and it insists that that
work is “intended to be read in a fashion similar to Hermetic
palingenetic literature.” This takes us directly into a highly
contentious area where scholarly disagreements may run rampant.
Tryphonopoulos is careful to substantiate his case as far as possible
with documentation. He traces Pound’s occult interests to his early
years in America, although they developed fully only after his move to
London, where he became acquainted with occultist groups. Thereafter,
his reading and writing become increasingly suffused with the
“occult” in various manifestations, including the Eleusinian
Mysteries (with their imputed psychosexual initiation and esoteric
lore).

Whatever one’s reactions to this approach, it seems clear that Pound
was indeed deeply involved in aspects of the “occult.” It is in the
nature of such material to arouse divergent responses. If the reader
wishes to enter fully into the spirit of Pound, as interpreted here, one
must undergo a rite of initiation, moving through the darkness and
obscurity of the text to the light of revelation as one encounters
“the celestial tradition.”

Tryphonopoulos seems to me to offer a useful corrective to prevailing
views of Pound by taking seriously material only too readily dismissed
as cranky and embarrassing. What needs to be done now is a synthesis of
the private and the public, of the arcana and the economics.